Bigotry Determined Webster’s New
World Dictionary defines “bigot” as “a person who holds blindly and
intolerantly to a particular creed, opinion, etc.” and “bigotry” as “the
behavior, attitude, or beliefs of a bigot.”

Police State Thomas Kachadurian’s column might get the facts right but misses the story.

Oppose The Shell Game Is this a
Shell Game? As a Democrat, I support increased taxes on motor fuels and
vehicles to provide funding for our transportation infrastructure.

Sugars On The Way Senator Patrick
Colbeck from Canton introduced a bill and the Senate passed it allowing
schools and Girl & Boy Scout troops to have up to 3 bake sales per
week.

Unions under the gun

I‘ve been a member of four unions during my life, but didn‘t alwaysappreciate what it meant to be part of the brotherhood of labor.For instance, as a newly-minted member of the UAW many years ago, Iscoffed at the idea of receiving health insurance as a union benefit.Why would I ever need such a thing? I wondered.I was 19 at the time and health insurance was a rare and novel thing,entirely unknown among my peers. If you werent a union member or agovernment employee, chances are you didnt have it.Today, of course, we know that a lack of health insurance can be a ticketto bankruptcy and chronic illness, perhaps even the grave.Yet as a naive college student working in a factory in the Detroit area, Ididnt have the sense to appreciate that wiser heads in the UAW werelooking out for my best interests.During my late teens and 20s I belonged to the UAW, AFL-CIO, theTeamsters, and the Detroit Newspaper Guild. Joining the union was an offeryou couldnt refuse if you wanted a job in the Detroit area in the 70s. It was the price of admission for us factory rats, and personally, I hadno complaints because a union shop meant the pay, benefits and safetystandards were better than the alternative.Better, say, than those perilous non-union stamping plants where you couldstand at a hammering machine all day in a state of exhaustion, riskingthe loss of a finger or a hand for little more than the minimum wage.Many felt then and now that it wasnt right to require employees to join aunion to obtain a job. But consider, if you werent required to join theunion at the factories I worked at, then there would have been an endlessstream of clueless 19-year-olds to fill the boots of injured, aging oraggrieved workers deprived of collective bargaining. Workers who could beused up and spat out without any consequences.The American labor movement is proud of what it did to establish themiddle class in our country. In 1938, union leaders working with theadministration of Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Fair LaborStandards Act which led to the 40-hour work week, time-and-a-half forovertime and the abolition of child labor. The act also bumped up theminimum wage to 40 cents per hour -- enough to make a decent living aboveand beyond the subsistence wage preferred by employers at the time.Prior to changes demanded by union activists, many Americans worked 10hours a day, six days a week. Other union achievements included saferworking conditions and benefits such as paid vacations, health insurance,paid sick days and holidays. Home ownership became a possibility for manyAmericans as a result of bloody strikes that ended servitude to thecompany store and the wage slavery described in Upton Sinclairs book,The Jungle, in which workers were paid just above the level ofstarvation as a popular business philosophy.Yet by the time Bob Dylan wrote Union Sundown in 1984 (Sure was a goodidea, til greed got in the way.) the esteem of unions had begun a longslide in the eyes of many Americans. Added to this was decades ofunion-bashing by well-funded conservative think tanks that fed into themainstream media. As Dylan wrote as far back as the early ‘80s, unionjobs were being outsourced to Argentina and Brazil, filled by a guymaking 30 cents a day.Today, the labor movement is at war with the Republican Party, with thebattlegrounds being the state capitals of Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio andMichigan. At issue is whether these and other casualties in the Rust Belt will become right-to-work states, meaning employees will no longer berequired to join unions or pay dues.In Michigan, public employee unions fear they‘ll lose hard-won contractsand the right to collective bargaining under the state‘s new emergencyfinancial managers.Also, seven Republican state senators have co-sponsored a bill toestablish right-to-work zones in our counties and municipalities. Thiscould be the hole in the dike that leads to Michigan becoming aright-to-work state in general.Gov. Snyder has said that he wouldnt push for right-to-work legislation,but would sign it if it came from the Republican-controlled House andSenate.Shades of Wisconsin.There are currently 22 right-to-work states in the U.S., most of them inthe South and the center of the country. The Mackinac Center -- aconservative think tank -- notes that eight of the 11 states with thelowest unemployment rates in the country were right-to-work states in2010. Theres also the claim that Michigans unemployment rate is 50%higher than the average right-to-work state.This makes for good union bashing, but faulty logic. Is it the fault ofMichigan union members that the Big 3 automakers made terrible choices inthe cars they chose to produce while Toyota, Hyundai and Honda made offwith their market?And should union workers be blamed for the disaster unleashed by WallStreet, which wrecked our economy along with the tax base that supportsour state budget?Some hope that the union protests in Madison, Lansing and other statecapitals will result in a populist uprising of support of labor, save themiddle class and stick it to the GOP in the next election......but that is forgetting that this is the country that bounced theDemocrats out of office for the high crime & treason of enacting a verymodest reform of our health care system. If Americans don‘t care aboutthe collective health of their fellow citizens (not to mention their ownself-interest), why should they care about labor?Given that, it should be interesting to see which way the wind blowsleading up to the 2012 election.